PSA: Your Instagram Stories Are Public

Instagram did such a good job of completely ripping off Snapchat’s stories feature that you might think the two features work exactly the same. Well, I’ve got some bad news for you: your Instagram stories are totally public.

That’s right, unlike Snapchat, where only people who can see your stories are people you have added as friends by default, Instagram shows your stories to the whole world via your profile page.

Click on the user’s profile image to see their story.

If the user’s profile picture is lit up with a colourful border around it, just tap on it to view their story. You don’t have to follow them, and they don’t have to follow you. This is useful feature if you’re really into hardcore creeping.

Here’s another fun tip: swipe up on your story to see who’s looking at it!

Instagram doesn’t have a way to turn this off, other than making your account private. But you can banish specific people from seeing your Instagram story under Options > Story Settings. The only surefire way to keep the entire world from creeping on your Instagram stories, of course, is not to use the new Instagram feature at all.